This week on From the Vault we celebrate three legends who all have rare recordings within the Pacifica Radio Archives: actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson, Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and ultra-hipster Richard “Lord†Buckley.
We lead off with rare audio of Paul Robeson visiting Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley, California in 1958. This recording is one of the true treasures of the Pacifica Radio Archives, and was one of the first 50 recordings selected by an advisory panel to be digitized and preserved , funded in part by a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts grant. In this recording, Robeson is being interviewed by Pacifica public affairs director Elsa Knight Thompson.
From the world of art and politics, we move to the world of architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright. In April of 1957, the famed American architect gave a talk at the University of California - Berkeley, and KPFA recorded the event. In his speech, Wright muses on the failings of many popular design philosophies and the need for radical new expression in architecture.
Finally, we end with ultra-hipster Richard “Lord†Buckley, a comedian trained in the Vaudeville era, a storyteller who threw words around like ping-pong balls in a wind tunnel. In 1959, he visited Bill Butler at KPFA in Berkeley and recorded what is now know as “Noblesse Obliging.†This is classic Pacifica Radido Archives material.
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